Your editorial deriding Amtrak (Apr 30) conveniently omits salient points. Contrary to diminishing the respected experience record of Amtraks new CEO, Mr. Wick Moorman, who rose thru the ranks of the Norfolk Southern and knows more about track infrastructure than your politicians and media, you should be thankful that he understands what must be done now. For those who have any semblance of an idea of the history to this problem know it goes back to 1976 when your regional political power bloc foisted the Northeast Corridor upon Amtrak, but without the requisite funding to maintain and improve the infrastructure.

How would this funding issue been better resolved had the Passenger Rail Investment & Improvement Act of 2008 required the states served by the Northeast Corridor contribute for their trains based upon the same Amtrak derived full cost allocation methodology used for all other states, instead of free loading? Coupled to that financial equation, the Northeastern commuter lines enjoyed a free ride on Amtraks Northeast Corridor since 1976. Although required to make payment to Amtrak initially by this act in 2008, Amtrak deferred collection in an apparent play to its Northeast political patronage base, until directly mandated by Congress in December, 2015. What would the passenger rail infrastructure bank look like today under different political circumstances?

Even before Super Storm Sandy enhanced the deterioration of the Hudson River tunnels in 2012, it was quite obvious of the need for their replacement; yet, the nation as a whole has been dragging its heels on infrastructure since the 1980s to keep taxes artificially low. But why was their such a lax mentality by the regions federal, state, and municipal politicos towards relieving such a singular economic bottleneck for their region, as identified by Penn Station? Indeed, the imbedded political issues of your NY/NJ Port Authority are well known west of the Hudson. Even now, PANYNJ ignores Penn Station; electing instead to line-up $57 Million to extend PATH to Newark Liberty Airport. Another dose of reality is the multi-tiered priorities of Governor Cuomo for re-building LaGuardia, a tunnel between Penn Station-Grand Central (originally killed by Governor Pataki), expanding new 2nd Avenue subway, repairing L and R lines from Hurricane Sandy, a new Port Authority bus terminal; perhaps even a replacement for Carnegie Deli.

The Northeast media and it politicos deliberately elected to forgo the fact that the Northeast Corridor conveniently ignores basic GAAP by falsely claiming profitability before infrastructure costs are included. Convinced how the Corridors profits subsidized the national system of long distance trains, your federal politicos succeeded to recently shear off and isolate the Corridor, not understanding how the Corridors excessively high infrastructure and overhead costs are amortized across the national system. So, whats the next play, given that even now, NJT and LIRR fail to pay their fair share of costs at Penn Station?

Digesting these salient points, a caveat to the media and politicos of the Northeast from former U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, who said in 2003: Either we commit to dramatically improving rail for the entire country or we abandon the pretense of a national system and turn it over to the states and private companies. Our motto for passenger rail is National or Nothing!

Your conflicting political problems are incorrectly laid off on Amtraks new CEO, when the past nine years of a non-rail Amtrak CEO from NY state was tolerated, as well as the perpetual Northeastern domination of Amtraks Board of Directors, with a cavalier wink and slap on the back from the regions politicos and media.

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